[Python-Dev] xmlrpclib and communication verbosity

[Erez Sh]

In an attempt to record the xml exchange in an xmlrpclib.ServerProxy
connection, I set its verbose flag to 1.
This is the whole premise, and the rest of this message contains a bug
report, and general complaints about the API.

ServerProxy, or to be a bit more specific, the Transport class (which does
all the actual printing), provides very little control over where the output
goes.
By very little, I mean it only outputs to stdout, which is limiting in a
server environment where many a prints occur.

That, however, turned out to be the least of my worries: xmlrpclib depends
on httplib.HTTP to print the outgoing data, but prints its own incoming
data,
and they tend to collide, in what I permit myself to call a "race
condition", though it's mostly just simple lack of management of a shared
resource (stdout).
The resulting output is mostly well-formed, with the occasional nonsense
produced by an interjection of one string to the middle of the other.

Also, there's the nasty business of Transport.request accepting a 'verbose'
param, and then setting it as an instance attribute and using *that*, for no
apparent reason except to cause yet another potential race condition.

I suggest that httplib.HTTP's verbosity will be controlled by a separate
flag, if controlled at all.
The outgoing communication can easily be printed by transport, allowing for
better control of synchrony.
Also, ServerProxy should accept an optional output file (=a class with
write,writelines methods), which will be the target of all prints.

Would Python be interested in such a patch?

Best Regards,
  Erez
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